On Saturday 5th of August Aoife's Sensory bus has teamed up with 50 members of staff from local Scottish Ambulance Service stations and Crosshouse emergency department to take part in our first "West Highland Way in a day challenge."

This involves five teams each doing a stage of the 96 mile route from Milngavie to Fort William.

Stage 1: 20 miles, Milngavie-Balmaha.

Stage 2: 21 miles, Balmaha-Inveranan.

Stage 3: 19 miles, Inveranan-Bridge of Orchy.

Stage 4: 21 miles, Bridge of Orchy-Kinlochleven.

Stage 5: 16 miles, Kinlochleven-Fort William.

Aoife's Story

Aoife's Sensory Bus all started from the life experiences of a beautiful, feisty little girl called Aoife who sadly died in December 2019. She is our inspiration and behind everything we have achieved so far.

Aoife was diagnosed with a brain tumour when she was 16 months old and underwent several surgeries, 18 months of chemotherapy along with radiotherapy. She was part of a clinical trial at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London for almost two years. With all of these procedures and treatments Aoife’s development was affected and delayed. When Aoife was receiving treatment her family noticed the enormous positive impact that sensory equipment and interactive spaces had on her and other children.

With this in mind the family wanted to raise funds to provide a sensory and interactive learning environment for all of the pupils to use at Monkton Primary School. They wanted to give her an opportunity to go to school in her own village with all of her friends. This initial goal was achieved unbelievably quickly with the sensory room at Monkton Primary School up and running.

A great opportunity presented itself early on when we started the fundraising and after having a meeting with Stagecoach bus company, we were very kindly donated a bus. From this huge opportunity we continued to fundraise and decided to create an official charity to support our endeavours to make this succeed.

We are passionate that the purpose of the bus is multi use to target young people across Ayrshire who require a sensory integrated approach to improve their wellbeing and assist their educational targets in a creative and meaningful way. We appreciate the cost of a sensory room is extensive and therefore understand that all schools cannot install such; thus, feel that our bus is a fantastic method of providing such means to young people.

We continue to fundraise and create awareness for our charity and hope you can support us in any way can, even if it's a share of our website and our social media sites!